I've seen a lot frameworks to create a semantic web (or rather the model below it). What tools are there to create a small semantic web or repository on the desktop, for example for personal information management.
Please include information how easy these are to use for a casual user, (in contrast to someone who has worked in this area for years). So I'd like to hear which tools can create a repository without a lot of types and where you can type the nodes later, as you learn about your problem domain.
For personal semantic information management on the desktop there is NEPOMUK. There are two versions, one embedded in kde4, this lets you tag, rate and comment things such as files, folders, pictures, mp3s, etc. on the desktop across all applications.
Another version is written in Java and is OS independent, this is more of a research prototype. It has more features, but is overall less stable.
For KDE-Nepomuk see http://nepomuk.kde.org/
For Java-Nepomuk see http://dev.nepomuk.semanticdesktop.org/ and http://dev.nepomuk.semanticdesktop.org/download/ for downloads (the DFKI version is better)
Extensive list of semantic web tools
Also check out Protege
If you need to create a small model, then I suggest that you use topbraid. I have used for creating much larger models and I know people who have used to create humongous models. It comes packaged with a set of reasoners and provides ability to plug-in custom reasoner and in case if you decide to make your model larger, you can even integrate Topbraid with a triple store like Allegrograph.
And since its based on eclipse, to get started with it is relatively easier.
For developers who are spoiled working in more matured programming languages like Java (IDEA ? anyone), topbraid is the closest tool to an actual IDE.
Chandler is a "a notebook you can organize, back up and share!" It seems to be pretty simple to use.
OS: Windows, Mac, Linux
Related
In the expert system D3WEB, it is possible to insert\develop\use Ontology. However, I cannot get the point what's the purpose to introduce ontology in D3WEB?
The nice example on this page, https://www.d3web.de/Wiki.jsp?page=Demo%20-%20Ontology , shows how to develop an ontology in D3WEB. In my opinion, it can be more efficiently developed using Protégé. If the contents shall be changed with a real application, for instance, an ontology about 'dog', in the real application there could be instance dog A, B, C, D. It might be not feasible to 'insert' the instances into the D3WEB knowledge base. However, if the ontology changes over time, how to use the ontology in D3WEB then?
In my opinion, the best way is to develop an ontology outside of D3WEB using Java code. However, I believe the designer of D3WEB would have a nice reason to introduce ontology in D3WEB. I will appreciate it if someone let me know.
This is a somewhat common question we get regarding d3web-KnowWE, one reason might be, that our naming is somewhat misleading. So let me explain.
First there is d3web the java framework to run knowledge bases with strong problem solving knowledge, including rules, decision trees, flow-charts, covering lists, cost-benefit dialog strategies, time based reasoning, and so on. This framework in its core does not provide any GUIs, but is meant to integrate problem solving capabilities in other applications/expert systems. It also does not provide a way to properly create/author the knowledge bases it runs, aside maybe from doing it in the Java code on an API level.
To also provide proper means to author and develop a knowledge base, including some basic dialogs to run, demo, test, and debug the authored knowledge bases, we began working on the wiki system KnowWE, which today is basically a heavily extended JSPWiki. The page d3web.de itself for example is also just a build of KnowWE with specific content.
While we were working on and with KnowWE, we began to really like the approach to edit and author large knowledge bases in this 'wiki way', were you automatically support multiple distributed users to work on the same knowledge base, have automatic versioning, can add nice documentation directly beside the actual formal knowledge, can generate knowledge using script (because it's all just simple text markup), and so forth. Also, the underlying architecture of KnowWE became quite good and mature over the years.
So after some time of this, we found ourselves in the need to also author large ontologies. And yes, Protégé is a nice tool to develop ontologies, but for our use cases, it was just not well suited and we also found it to not scale very well. So we began to implement some simple markups to also allow to also develop ontologies in KnowWE. After then recognizing, that authoring ontologies the 'wiki way' indeed works pretty nicely, we decided to again also share these tools with everybody else on d3web.de. And that is why today you can author/develop both d3web knowledge bases and ontologies in KnowWE, although there is no actual connection/interoperability between both as of now. That would be nice of course and maybe we add this in the future, but for KnowWE is just a development environment for these two knowledge representation.
Maybe you can see KnowWE similar to an IDE like eclipse or IntelliJ, where the same application can be used to develop many different programming languages. KnowWE does the same for different knowledge representations.
A problem is maybe, that historically, we didn't differentiate very well between KnowWE and d3web, because KnowWE was narrowly used to build d3web knowledge bases. We also like to call KnowWE and its distribution package d3web-KnowWE for example. But maybe this should change...
Thanks for pointing this out, I will try to correct/clarify this on d3web.de
Traditional categorization of processes is talking about integration, human centric and document centric processes, with the last one as a good candidate for placing inside the DMS system (of course, the prerequisite is that there is a built-in support for BPM).
But I was unable to find some concrete,more detailed explanation of the distinction between those options.
Imagine a company, that have Enterprise BPM solution , and also a DMS system with quite good support for BPM (i.e. Filenet DMS).
In both systems you can create user screens and workflows (process logic) as well.
Also, most processes working with documents are also quite "human-centric".
I am perfectly aware of the fact, that choosing the target platform always depends on the requirements and specific circumstances, but I wonder, if there are some general rules, or principles, based on which I can better decide where to put the process layer of the whole solution.
Additional clarification:
I don't want to implement any new platform. As I indicated a little bit in the previous post, we already have BPM platform (Oracle) and DMS as well (Filenet with BPM support - Case Foundation). So the question is not about choosing the new platform...but more about setting the rules for using the existing products/platforms. There are a lot new projects in the queue...and for some of them (that are touching the area of working with documents) we need to decide the target platform/s. For example, when you have a simple process with a few steps, and in all steps there is some work with an existing document (the document - or at least his original version, is also input to this process), the requirements on the front-end are not very complicated etc...it would simpler to build the whole solution in the Filenet platform( mostly because of the cost). But I am wondering if there are some similar rules....Like you should think about that or that... when you want use only the DMS platform...or both platforms etc. You can call these rules the principles for development, references architectures or something like that....that is guiding you when designing the target architecture/s.
Thank you
I'm reposting the answer because I don't see a reason for deletion (by #Bohemian).
I think it adds value to anyone asking the same question. #Bohemian could have at least specified why he deleted the post.
Here it goes:
You gave us rather small amount of information. And what exactly is
the question? What do you mean by "where to put the process layer"?
You shouldn't constrain yourself to only those DM systems that claim
to have BPM built-in. That's marketing speak behind which often lay
two half-baked products. You should instead question which
standards-based integration points the system has, so you can
integrate effortlessly. And then invest in best-of-breed DM and best
BPM separately. All-in-one solutions are often too closed, difficult
to extend and above all, they bring free vendor-lock-in with them.
What are your business requirements, i.e. what do you have to do?
Implement BPM inside organization that already has DM or not? Do you
have some BPM platform already? Do you have any
constraints/requirements when choosing either of those (vendor,
technology foundation, Gartner quadrant...)?
What are the options you're considering for DM and which options are
you evaluating (if any) as a BPM platform? Have you already settled on
IBM or you can go elsewhere? Is open source an option?
What is your role/responsibility in this project?
EDIT - after the author's clarifications:
I have not worked with Oracle's BPM, but I can tell you that, although Case Foundation is more suited to Case Management, you can develop a complete Process Management solution with it (workflows, tasks, roles, deadlines, in-baskets, etc.).
If you go that path and later come across the business need to allow business users to define their own case templates, take a look at IBM Case Manager, as it builds on top of Case Foundation, but also brings additional WebUI features (built on IBM Content Navigator), suitable for business users (although, more often than not, it turns out the IT does that job).
A few IBM redbooks about Case & Content management that might help you make an informed decision:
Introducing IBM FileNet Business Process Manager - this is the former name for Case Foundation - the same product, new version.
Advanced Case Management with IBM Case Manager
Customizing and Extending IBM Content Navigator - you'll need this one for customizations, if you decide to go with CF (instead of Oracle).
Building IBM Enterprise Content Management Solutions From End to End - from ingestion to case/process management (contains Case Manager).
I agree with #Robert regarding integration, after all, before version 5.2 FileNet Content Platform Engine was FN Content Engine + FN Process Engine.
The word of advice I can give you is to first document all features that business requires from BPM. Then do a due diligence on both products, noting down which of those features each of those products supports. Then the answer, if not laid out in front of you, will at least be much easier.
You also have to take into account that IBM is oriented towards IBM BPM (former Lombardi) when process management is concerned. Former FN BPM is now more pushed into Case Management (but those two are very similar paradigms).
You should definitely post back about your experience, whichever option you choose.
Good "luck" :)
Currently there are multiple (about 15-30) independent web applications written in another language. Each one is completely independent with files, images, headers, users, databases etc. etc. The whole 9yards, except that they all exist under the same domain and should have the same style (but they don't). They will soon be converted to C# ASP.NET MVC 2. They do share the same LDAP authentication.
The question has come up in my mind as to whether these should be setup as multiple MVC solutions or be done within a single MVC application. They will all have the same styles, mostly the same images, and it would be nice for them to share basic functions.
The reason this isn't a simple cut and dry solution to me, is that some of these applications are quite large by themselves and throwing them all together might be hard to manage. Not to mention the development of new applications will continue as well as new features added to the existing ones. Making this possibly an extremely large solution.
I am fairly new to MVC and even though I have a good understanding of it now, I'm still trying to rewire my brain here and there to work with the methodology and design.
I guess what I'm asking for, is those of you who have more experience with MVC than I do to share some incite and wisdom about MVC in practical use to give me a direction to start thinking.
Please, make yourself a favor and do not combine them in a single solution. I worked once in a project where we had one huge solution to work and that was the root of all evil. If you place everything in a single solution, you are increasing the complexity of all projects, you might be thinking, I am actually going to save a few lines of code by reusing something, but the truth is that you are creating a deadly solution which will become a bottleneck eventually
Consider the following:
The performance of Visual Studio is affected when you have more than 30-40 projects, which means that your build is going to take more and more time.
If you implement a build server (and you should) if you have one huge solution, the script to build only the projects related to each application would be really complex
Now I think you already did the most difficult part of the design when you say:
Currently there are multiple (about 15-30) independent web applications written in another language
If your applications are independent that means they have an independent domain, so there is no reason to place them in a single solution, not even treat them as modules.
Managing independent solutions does not mean that you cannot have shared components among them, (BTW when I say shared components I mean infrastructure components, please do not try to reuse domain objects).
So now the question is how should I reference the shared components?
In these days, I have found that the best way to reuse infrastructure components among solutions-projects, is by using Nugets. Using Nugets makes it easy to distribute new version of the components, so my suggestion is: create a private Nuget server in your organization (a simple IIS application) and add to this server your own private packages and just reference them from your solutions
You can place in your Nuget packages practically anything you need including:
Assemblies
XML config files (including common XML logger configuration files)
Common JavaScript files
Common Style Sheets files
etc...
This is a good article to create a private Nuget repository
http://docs.nuget.org/docs/creating-packages/hosting-your-own-nuget-feeds
To create a Nuget:
http://docs.nuget.org/docs/creating-packages/creating-and-publishing-a-package
And finally to integrate the creation of a Nuget in your CI server:
http://www.hanselman.com/blog/NuGetForTheEnterpriseNuGetInAContinuousIntegrationAutomatedBuildSystem.aspx
http://docs.nuget.org/docs/reference/command-line-reference
When I go for combining multiple web applications into single.. I'll consider the below points.
If all the applications shares a common business model.
If they shares a common infrastructure (security, validation, logging and others..)
If they shares same a common user base.
If combining multiple projects into one helps me to reduce the cost of maintenance and enhancement.
In your case you said each one of them is completely independent then why you need to combine?
My recomendation is DI and create each proyect like a plug-in ,so each proyect can be developed or manage in separate without affect others
I have a few proyects with MEF and it's so easy create new or manage existents plug-ins
Here is a getting started MVC and MEF… http://blog.maartenballiauw.be/post/2009/04/21/ASPNET-MVC-and-the-Managed-Extensibility-Framework-%28MEF%29.aspx
and a downloadable example http://www.hanselman.com/blog/ExtendingNerdDinnerAddingMEFAndPluginsToASPNETMVC.aspx
The same style could be accomplished with a unified stylesheet referenced by all, as long as you use similar mark-up in your pages within the apps. Common functionality could be provided through a unified class library. To me, it really depends on exactly how close the style and functionality are between apps... do you want the exact same markup on every page, etc.
It is common to have an instance of the Controller per application, however if you implement this using a data driven Front Controller then there only needs to be a single Class within your new WeB Application framework. So each Application might have a configuration file that maps URL to Command Class files. These can be constructed on demand or requested from a Resource Pool. A big advantage of this approach is that many of these commands would start as a very thin wrappers (ServiceToWorker) over the existing application and/or ASP views.
I totally agree with Marks answer, ask yourself "why" do you need to combine them. Do they really need to be independent?
My additional comments though are....
What you should definitely think of....
Create a unified CSS files which use the same images to be used by your applications
Write some universal JQuery (Mobile version if these are public facing) using JQuery templates/partial views as well to give all these seperate applications a unified experience
If you are not going to unify your server side code in terms of the DAL etc, then just concentrate on the client side.
What language, framework, and hosting considerations should one make before starting development of a scalable web application?
The most important consideration is not to over-engineer to the point that it gets in the way of building and launching something. Analysis paralysis is the single biggest inhibitor to productivity, progress and results.
Yes, do some planning. Pick a framework. Perfection in a framework will be impossible to find because it doesn't exist, partially because you don't know what you need until you build it anyways. Chances are, if you pick something, it will be better than picking nothing.
Yes, try to pick flexible, inter-operable tools for where you see yourself going.
Yes, look for a good built-in feature set where you see yourself going in the next 6-18 Months. Trying to look beyond that is not really realistic anyways as most projects change so much anyways going towards the first release.
So, pick what you're comfortable with or what is familiar. Don't follow the crowd, do what gets you the best results, quickest, and often. Understand that you might have to change in the future. So, whatever you build now, try to use unit testing so you can re-factor if ever needed.
If what you're building is going to be super successful, it will be a great problem to have, and an easy one to work on once it's making money as you'll be able to get other talent to help you.
Share what you end up picking and why for your situation -- it helps the us learn from you too!
Don't necessarily marry yourself to one language or framework. It may be that some parts of your site work better with different languages and frameworks than others. For example, all of 37signals' sites are based on Ruby on Rails, but they recently wrote a blog post about how the underlying technology of one is actually written in Erlang now because it's much easier to do concurrency that way.
Obviously there's a level of complexity where things turn into a mishmash, but using the right tool for the job — even if that means different tools for different jobs — can simplify things.
Firstly on language, it largely doesn't matter. PHP, Java and .Net being probably the biggest three are all proven in the sense that they run some of the largest sites on the Web so don't listen to anyone who tells you one is more suited than any of the others.
Some might also put Ruby and Django/Python in this list. I have nothing against them but I'm not aware of any big (say top 50) sites using either.
Hosting considerations depend on how low you want to start but basically the order is:
Shared;
Virtual Private Server;
Dedicated.
Scalability will largely be about your application's design than any language, framework or provider. Efficient database schema, efficient delivery and use of Javascript/CSS and in-memory caching are all issues common to any language or framework.
Language - I'd recommend something with good frameworks and good testing libraries like Perl or Java.
Framework - it depends on what do you plan to do. If you start with a hosting that does not allow FastCGI, it is best to avoid such frameworks like Catalyst or Rails. That's why I love CGI::Application (primarily Perl, but ported to other languages too) - it can run as CGI, FastCGI or mod_perl. For development it can be run from it's own web server.
Hosting - nothing is better than you own server. It can be your own server, leased server or virtual server. But you can start with cheapest hosting and when you need more, you should be able to afford it.
It depends.
Start by looking at your requirements (Functional or user defined) (Non Functional - aspects that describe your desired system link text)
Next I would clarify what it means to have a scalable web application. Define it as test cases that can be clearly tested (must support X page views / second with response time < Y seconds).
Once I had those pieces in place I would look at what type of skills my development team can support (for the intial project and on going maintenance). Then find some case studies of applications out in the wild that use similar language or framework. If someone else has made a specific language / framework scale then chances are good that you can too.
Finally go out and look for some hosting providers that support your chosen language, framework and requirements.
What tools are available for metamodelling?
Especially for developing diagram editors, at the moment trying out Eclipse GMF
Wondering what other options are out there?
Any comparison available?
Your question is simply too broad for a single answer - due to many aspects.
First, meta-modelling is not a set term, but rather a very fuzzy thing, including modelling models of models and reaching out to terms like MDA.
Second, there are numerous options to developing diagram editors - going the Eclipse way is surely a nice option.
To get you at least started in the Eclipse department:
have a look at MOF, that is architecture for "meta-modelling" from the OMG (the guys, that maintain UML)
from there approach EMOF, a sub set which is supported by the Eclipse Modelling Framework in the incarnation of Ecore.
building something on top of GMF might be indeed a good idea, because that's the way existing diagram editors for the Eclipse platform take (e.g. Omondo's EclipseUML)
there are a lot of tools existing in the Eclipse environment, that can utilize Ecore - I simply hope, that GMF builts on top of Ecore itself.
Dia has an API for this - I was able to fairly trivially frig their UML editor into a basic ER modelling tool by changing the arrow styles. With a DB reversengineering tool I found in sourceforge (took the schema and spat out dia files) you could use this to document databases. While what I did was fairly trivial, the API was quite straightforward and it didn't take me that long to work out how to make the change.
If you're of a mind to try out Smalltalk There used to be a Smalltalk meta-case framework called DOME which does this sort of thing. If you download VisualWorks, DOME is one of the contributed packages.
GMF is a nice example. At the core of this sits EMF/Ecore, like computerkram sais. Ecore is also used for the base of Eclipse's UML2 . The prestige use case and proof of concept for GMF is certainly UML2 Tools.
Although generally a UML tool, I would look at StarUML. It supports additional modules beyond what are already built in. If it doesn't have what you need built in or as a module, I supposed you could make your own, but I don't know how difficult that is.
Meta-modeling is mostly done in Smalltalk.
You might want to take a look at MOOSE (http://moose.unibe.ch). There are a lot of tools being developed for program understanding. Most are Smalltalk based. There is also some java and c++ work.
Two of the most impressive tools are CodeCity and Mondrian. CodeCity can visualize code development over time, Mondrian provides scriptable visualization technology.
And of course there is the classic HotDraw, which is also available in java.
For web development there is also Magritte, providing meta-descriptions for Seaside.
I would strongly recommend you look into DSM (Domain Specific Modeling) as a general topic, meta-modeling is directly related. There are eclipse based tools like GMF that currently require java coding, but integrate nicely with other eclipse tools and UML. However there are two other classes out there.
MetaCase which I will call a pure DSM tool as it focuses on allowing a developer/modeler with out nearly as much coding create a usable graphical model. Additionally it can be easily deployed for others to use. GMF and Microsoft's Beta software factory/DSM tool fall into this category.
Pure Meta-modeling tools which are not intended for DSM tooling, code generation, and the like. I do not follow these tools as closely as I am interested in applications that generate tooling for SMEs, Domain Experts, and others to use and contribute value to an active project not modeling for models sake, or just documentation and theory.
If you want to learn more about number 1, the tooling applications for DSMs/Meta-modeling, then check out my post "DSMForum.org great resources, worth a look." or just navigate directly to the DSMForum.org
In case you are interested in something that is related to modelling and not generation of code, have a look at adoxx.org. As a metamodelling platform it does provide functionalities and mechanisms to quickly develop your own DSL and allows you to focus on the models needs (business requirements, conceptual level design/specification). There is an active community from academia and practice involved developing prototypical as well as commercial application based on the platform. Could be interesting ...